Bletchley 2 Antiques Roadshow

This sculpture weighs one and a half tonnes and is made from 500,000 pieces of Welsh slate.

It's wonderfully intricate.

This is one of only a few memorials to an amazing man,

whose brilliant mind helped win the Second World War.

His name was Alan Turing.

So welcome to a second helping of the Roadshow from Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire.

When we think of the Second World War, images of armed combat and

deadly force and military technology come to mind, but at Bletchley Park,

the sheer force of ingenuity displayed in huts like these, played just as big a role.

One of those ingenious minds belonged to a Cambridge mathematician, Alan Turing,

who turned his brilliance into breaking German wartime codes.

When the Germans sent secret messages, they encoded them

into incoherent text so the British and the Allies couldn't read them.

The messages were sent using a highly secret and very complicated machine.

And this is the machine that was causing all the problems -

the Enigma machine. Looks like a simple typewriter. But press a letter,

each letter will generate a hundred and fifty million million million options.

Once the Enigma messages were intercepted,

they were passed to Turing and the code-breaking team in these huts.

But the messages were so scrambled, it made the task

of decoding them almost impossible, without the help of some new British boffin-type technology.

So Turing built an elaborate machine called the Bomb,

which, using a complicated sequence of wiring and rotors,

could decode messages within hours.

At a time when the British needed to defeat the Germans in the sea battles of the Atlantic,

or to ensure the plans for invading France on D-Day in 1944 were kept secret,

Turing's technology became a crucial element in tipping the balance in favour of the Allies.

Without this secrecy and organisation, or the brilliant minds of Turing

and the Bletchley Park team, Britain and the Allies would have fought a much longer and bloodier war.

Today we're here to celebrate those heroic wartime achievements.

Over to our experts, who are busy uncovering more secrets from the past.

So I understand you know this very well as an umbrella stand.

Mm. Yes, it was in our hallway as a child, we've just grown up with it

and we used to put our umbrellas in there when we used to come in, and that's it.

-And I also hear that before coming in, you sort of thought of washing it in the dishwasher.

-Yes.

My mother died a year ago and we was clearing out her bits and I said...

Went to put it in the dishwasher and my sister said, "Ooh, don't put it in the dishwasher."

I said, "well it's not going to a Lalique or anything."

so as I turned it over,

-there's a sign under there and...

-Let's have a look.

So it says "R Lalique",

-so there is a chance that it's by R Lalique, isn't it?

-That's...

-So it didn't go in the dishwasher.

-That's a bit of luck.

-Yes.

I mean we know this, this is called... This appears in the 1932 Rene Lalique catalogue,

and it's called La Monnaie Du Pape.

"Monnaie du Pape" in French translates as monnaie - money, du - of the,

Pape - Pope.

The Pope's money, but in English we know it as the garden plant honesty.

-A flower.

-As the flower.

-Oh, I see. Oh, I can see it.

And if you look at that... Hold on a minute, I hear pennies dropping!

-Oh, I can see it now, right. Everyone thought it was grapes.

-It's honesty.

No, it's monnaie du Pape, and it's quite interesting, in that the colour is a good 'un.

I mean, amethyst for Lalique is really good, because in this case it's not size that counts,

it's colour, because a colourless version in this size of Monnaie Du Pape

is worth £800 to £1,000,

whereas an amethyst one, just like yours, is worth about £5,000.

GIGGLING AND APPLAUSE

Oh, dear.

Oh, dear! I won't put it on the staircase landing then, where it's been.

-Or the dishwasher.

-Or the dishwasher, really? Oh, right, OK.

This is the Japanese god Raiden,

and he's the god of thunder

-and wind.

-Right.

Ah, we'd always been told it was called the wind god, but...

This is his wind in a bag, you see.

The wind's coming out,

and it's frightening all these poor little people down on the ground.

They're peasants falling over one another

and this one, interestingly, is lying on his stomach.

Yes.

And you do do that in a thunderstorm in Japan

because the thunder god enters you through your navel,

so if you're the other way up

you've got a problem, so you lie down on the ground on your stomach.

It's carved ivory, elephant ivory,

very, very nicely done, well executed,

the details are very fine,

-he's got this sort of hairy skirt on which you would expect.

-Yes.

It works all the way round. What I like about this one particularly is

the mark, which says Nobuaki who is the carver, and it's been carved

and blackened in a very jagged way which suggests lightning.

It's a very... You know...

One in a million people would realise it, but it works.

Where did he come from?

Well, I believe it comes from my maternal grandfather who

worked on ships in the Far East prior to the First World War.

That is all I know about it.

Do we know when he started then in ships?

-Absolutely no idea.

-Right.

This just lived in my grandmother's house and that's all I know about it.

Well, my feeling is, he would have had to have picked it up in the 1880s, 1890s...

and I don't know whether that fits in with...

I... Without doing some research I wouldn't know.

Anyway, I think it's a lovely thing and I think it would make

-somewhere in the region of £1,200 to £1,500.

-Good grief!

-That's all right, isn't it?

-Yes, very nice, thank you very much indeed!

-Not at all.

This is a really robust-looking child's high chair

made of solid oak so it's really stood the test of time.

Nice little cushioned back there so the child can sort of rest against it,

and here it is in its upright position, but unlike a lot of the chairs, high chairs

that you see today, this actually has various positions to it, doesn't it?

When did it come into your family?

The first I know about it was when my own husband sat in it

and his brother, 78 years ago, 80 years ago.

-Yes, so around 1930.

-Mm-hm.

And I expect you're wondering whether it was brand new for your husband

and his brother or whether it actually pre-dates that time.

I know it pre-dates it, but I don't know how, by how much.

Well, a generation roughly works out to be 25 years and I can tell you

that this chair is around 100 years old, so around 1910 or thereabouts.

So your husband would take it back to being three generations,

but actually it does go back to one just before that.

So this is its sort of normal eating position

and there's a ratchet at the side so it goes down into a low position,

and with the wheels, presumably it could be wheeled around a room

-for a child to play in it.

-Yes, mm.

And then also it goes into a rocking position.

-Rocking position, mm.

-Keep any child happy for hours.

-Oh, yes, yes.

And as to its value, well, I happen to have a baby at home

and, um I know how much these chairs cost,

you know, a modern chair would cost now, roughly in the region of sort of £100,

and quite bizarrely this has a very similar value, around £100 to £150.

-Mm.

-But if I was having to buy a chair, now, for a child,

I'd certainly choose one like this, rather than a modern one.

Yes, exactly.

Thank goodness artists sign their pictures, and I know not all artists

sign their pictures, but look at that little signature there...

"ARA", and you can also tell, not just that the artist's name is Ara -

in fact, his full name is Krishnaji Howlaji Ara -

but you can also tell, just by looking at those letters, that they're slightly trembly...

this is not someone who's used to writing.

There's something very interesting behind these pictures, but how do they come into your life?

Um, they belong to my father, he worked for The Times of India in Bombay in the early '50s.

-Ah.

-And the garage where he took his car to be serviced, Ara was working there as a mechanic

and he, I'm not quite sure how my dad saw the pictures, but he did, and he went back

and told the art editor at The Times of India, "There's this fantastic

"artist down at the local garage, come and have a look at his work."

And he came down and looked at it, and then they promoted his work through the newspaper, and I think

it was part of a growing new trend of Indian artists at the time and he was one of the leading lights of it.

This is slumdog millionaire stuff.

We have an artist who came to Mumbai as a five or seven year old,

you know, one of those kids that one sees around there on the streets.

And then got a living of, you know, hardly much of a living, a paltry living

and yet was spotted, but what's so compelling is, it was your father who spotted this artist.

Well, that's the story that my mother always says, um, I do know for sure

it was The Times of India that promoted his work, and there was a lot of confusion in my family

because my aunts thought my mother had been the model for this picture, but I can assure you she wasn't.

If we just look at the pictures briefly, take the top one here,

there's a sort of spirited, busy, colourful, spontaneous quality to it.

There are weaknesses in the drawing because we're talking about someone who wasn't trained,

but we're talking about someone who can actually use just their character and their energy to overcome that.

And you know, I love this, it's just full of incidental street detail,

and that water carrier and the squatting figure,

looks like she's washing with a piece of material in front of her, and then

this couple of curious kids putting their head into what looks like

a disused brazier, all real life.

And then the one below, which is so very different from the one above,

not least because the materials are different.

He's using pastel, by the looks of it, chalk, charcoal, a little bit of watercolour, so it's not just

the subject matter that differs, but for this self-taught kid, or at best in their teens, is producing

this type of painting, which can hold its own, you know, in a western context, to tell you the truth.

Sometimes you could argue that this type of work actually works better

because it's not over-complicated

by what's going on in the West, there's this purity about it.

So I suppose we ought to talk about a valuation for these two pictures.

The Indian economy, doing so well, I think has greatly underpinned the desirability of artists like this.

-Oh, right.

-And of course he's no Rembrandt, but he certainly has a place.

I would therefore confidently say that the one above is probably

an £800 to £1,200 picture, - it's busy and it's interesting.

And the one beneath,

well she's quite saucy and she's got quite a presence.

I would say about £1,500.

Right. Very nice, very nice to know, thank you very much.

Now, you know, we hear a lot about global warming these days, but it's nothing really new.

We've had global warming periods before, and this bit of furniture

actually reflects an earlier global warming period.

A warm period at the end of the 18th century, between 1780-1790 and 1800,

those 20, 25 years were very hot and the heat allowed women

to wear fashionable, very thin, empire-style dresses

and languorously lie around on sofas and so forth.

And in order to give them something to do in this new fashion,

they wanted to write their casual letters and so forth, and little notes on a table

which was conveniently made to pull over the end of the sofa, and that was the beginning of the sofa table.

We didn't have a sofa table in 1770.

Fashion and climate didn't allow it and didn't need it.

-Yes.

-So tell me the family history.

Well, my father was a trainee auctioneer,

and he bought this, in the '30s I guess, for the princely sum of 30 shillings.

-Really?

-Yeah.

Thirty shillings.

Well, we can date this sofa table quite accurately as being after 1800

because it has a half-circle loop

and a platform and then splayed feet coming off, and immediately that will

tell you between 1800 and probably 1820, that 20-year period.

-It's earlier than I thought.

-Wonderful rosewood, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-I mean I'm going to lift this chap up here.

I mean, these corners are beautiful and there's brass inlay

which is tricky, because brass and wood aren't natural partners,

one expands and contracts at a different rate to another,

-but nevertheless you've got most of it still.

-Yeah.

It's a lovely colour,

and these patterns were introduced after 1815 in a shop in London

by a man called Gaigneur who came from Paris

-and started his workshop here.

-Yeah.

So now we can narrow it down to 1815-1820 and that's what we do.

-But I love it. You're not going to do anything with this, are you?

-No.

-I mean...

-We polish it occasionally.

-That's all.

-Yes.

If you try and do anything here...

the problem with rosewood is that if you strip it to re-polish, it will go black.

-Yeah.

-And you'll lose that wonderful honey colour, and it's much better

-like this because it looks like family, and it is family.

-Oh, it is.

I think it's really just as it should be.

You'd expect a little shrinkage, you'd expect these to pop up from time to time.

Just lovely. Now, 30 shillings,

I'm going to stand back and have another look at it,

-very handsome, isn't it?

-I think so.

The whole thing is a very... This was made by a very, very good workshop.

-With something as handsome as this and of such great quality...

-Yeah.

Even in this condition, today's market, between £4,500 and £5,000.

-That's what I'd have hoped.

-I know that the value means nothing because the family are going to keep it.

On the other hand, what I hope will be of greater interest,

when you read again about global warming, just think of this table.

Tom, that is a very fine bear, what do you know about him?

The bear is from 1910.

He's a Steiff.

-Yes.

-And he was given to my great grandfather by the Duchess of Bedford.

That all sounds incredibly precise.

How do you know the date so absolutely pinpointed?

He was in a hospital that she set up, the cottage hospital in Woburn,

and he was in there over Christmas 1910,

and he was given this bear as a Christmas present by the Duchess.

Brilliant. Um, now, I mean, he's a fine-looking bear, isn't he?

I don't know why you need me, really, I think you know all about it! Do you...

-Looking at the audience, do you like this bear?

-Yes.

-Lovely.

-It's great, isn't it?

He is, I mean there are teddies and there are teddies, some really speak to you and I think that he is one.

Tom, what do you actually like about this bear in particular?

The realistic features, especially the nose and the face and things.

Exactly, I mean Steiff, the person who designed the Steiff bears,

a chap called Richard Steiff, designed these bears

by going to the zoo and actually sketching captive bears,

so you're absolutely right, it does look bear-like and it's got all the classic features

of a good quality Steiff bear, in that it's got long, very thick mohair fur,

it's got these big black boot-button eyes

and the proportions are quite interesting.

I mean, a modern teddy bear is very human in proportions,

whereas here, if you, if you put his arms down, you can see his...

-the bottom of his arms actually come down to below his knees.

-Yes.

And he's got very long feet as well.

Now, there's one reason for that...

and that is because he was designed in fact

to go on all fours.

-Oh.

-That's how they were designed.

-Oh, right.

So hence the actual proportions of his arms and legs, if you like, are very different to modern bears.

-Does he have a name?

-Oh, yes - Ernie.

And he's called Ernie because...?

His original owner was called Ernie.

-What, the one in 1910...?

-Yes.

-Ah, that's fantastic.

-So he inherits his owner's name.

-That's terrific.

-Now, is he yours now?

-Yes.

All right.

OK, is there somebody here to catch this young man?

I'm just about to give you the value.

Because the value is going to be between £3,000 and £5,000.

Gosh, for the first time, Tom is speechless!

What are you planning to do with him?

Keep him in his nice condition.

Very good, he's been obviously a well cared-for and much loved member of the family

since 1910, and he looks as if he's good for another hundred years, thanks very much indeed.

Do you know, I'm very excited by this,

I can hardly believe it.

That Massachusetts letter, "To my dear Annie" and it's one,

two,

three sides long and is signed "L A Borden" here.

Do I have, in my hands, a letter from Lizzie Borden?

It is Lizzie Borden. Um...

She killed her step-parents.

Her father, so patricide, I don't know what you say for step-mother.

-Step-matricide.

-Exactly.

Sounds a bit like a mattress, but there we are.

So how do I know that it is the killer Lizzie Borden?

Well, the Bordens were my grandparents' cousins and neighbours

in this small town, Fall River, which is on the Massachusetts/Rhode Island borders.

Right, what was the little ditty? There was a ditty about her, wasn't there?

Yes. "Lizzie Borden with an axe, gave her mother forty whacks,

"when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one."

It was actually her step-mother who she disliked intensely.

So here is the woman herself.

-Yes. At about the time of the trial, I think.

-Taken about the time of the trial.

Yes, she did it with a hatchet that... I mean, this is all alleged,

that she probably found it in the shed,

her father used to kill pigeons with this hatchet.

And so she was locked up and put on trial and all the rest of it.

-Yes.

-And she was acquitted. How could that possibly have been?

Well, because they couldn't find any incriminating evidence to convict her.

Her sister had noticed her putting a dress in the furnace at some point,

but as you can imagine, Fall River on an August day,

the policemen weren't actually probably very many of them on the ball,

and any evidence that was, was destroyed, and so she was acquitted.

Of course when she came out of prison, she went home, presumably.

Yes, and she was a Sunday School teacher before the case.

I don't think she was asked to be Sunday School teacher,

that probably wasn't on her list of activities,

but she was a great animal lover and she had a home for old horses.

And who are these people here?

Well, the letter that you mentioned was written to my grandmother.

Yes, that was Annie.

Yes. Lizzie wants to know the name of the stationer that she uses,

and mentions that the weather's too cold

so she hasn't been able to take the pony out,

and as soon as she can, she will take my father...

-And that is a picture of your father.

-That's my father, yes.

-On a boat somewhere.

Goodness knows where they were when that was taken. Could be on the Fall River.

Could be, they look incredibly serious.

-Yes.

-Now, Lizzie Borden is incredibly rare, autographically,

she hardly ever comes up.

But this has wonderful provenance.

I think a letter like that, which shows a perfectly ordinary person,

I would value this between £500 and £600.

-Thank you.

-Thank you, and that's amazing.

I think it will go back to where it came from.

-It will. It's not going anywhere.

-It's not, but thank you very much.

Look at this.

Washing machine. Turn the handle...

Isn't that marvellous?

-It's even got a hose.

-Yes, we used to use that.

You used to play with all of these things?

Only the washing machine and the cooker.

So, but these were your toys.

-They were, yes.

-But these are still...

The pastry set's still in the original box untouched.

-Yes, no, yeah, never took them out.

-And the detail is fantastic.

The fridge, that's the thing that really makes me laugh

because it's got prints of bottles of lime juice and cucumbers

and butter and ice cream, it's just absolutely marvellous.

And the cooker, this is alarming me a bit.

-What's that for?

-I think it still works.

-You actually plug it in?

-Yeah, you do.

-It's a child's toy and you plug it in?

It did, it did work, it did work years ago.

-So what happens?

-Oh, they just heat up.

-They get hot?

-Yeah, yeah.

-I don't think that would go with modern health and safety regulations!

-No, it wouldn't now.

I mean, does the oven warm up inside?

I don't know, I don't think so.

I think it's just the top.

How wonderful.

-Have you noticed the original box of the cooker, which is this...

-Yes.

-..has got a maker's mark on it?

Er, I hadn't taken a lot of notice really, no.

-Because it says on the top "AEG".

-Yes.

But here's the maker's mark, just on the end of the box.

-Right.

-And that's the mark of a company called Tipp & Co.

-Tip and...

Tipp & Co... T-I-P-P.

One of the few German toy makers that survived the Second World War.

-Oh.

-About when did you receive these?

-50 years ago.

-It fits, absolutely fits, it's nice to find something...

or so many things, in original boxes.

-Yes.

-So beautifully preserved,

wonderful, wonderful print on the lid of that box there.

-Mm.

-You know, they're not antiques, but I think they still,

being so beautifully preserved, have some value.

In terms of what they're worth,

-the Tipp & Co cooker, probably looking at £40 or £50.

-Right.

-And the other pieces on the table here, about £100, £150 for the group of them.

-Really? OK.

-It's not the value, it's just...

-No, I know.

..the wonderful romance of having these toys from your childhood so beautifully preserved

-and kept together like this. It's a real charming thing to see.

-Thank you.

These little embroideries, do you keep them in a darkened room?

Well, they are on my upstairs landing, they're not in the bright light.

Right, because one of the things which is so nice,

-is that the colours are still being held.

-Yes.

What can you tell me about them?

I know very, very little about them

except that they were left to me in my mother's will, with the proviso

that I pass them on to my daughter, and she to hers, etc.

And I don't know anything about them at all, really.

These little pictures, they were made in the Regency times,

around 1800, 1805.

What's quite unusual about them -

because one sees little tea caddies with this filigree-rolled paper...

-Right.

-..but you don't often see paintings or pictures as a whole,

and when we say rolled paper,

it's literally little pieces of paper been rolled over and then one edge has been gilded.

Time consuming, but when it works it looks fabulous.

The embroidery's very, very pretty.

But it's beautiful, the colours are absolutely exquisite.

-Really?

-These things are quite collectable because of the condition,

-what makes these again is the frames are all original.

-Yes.

Originality is so important.

What are they worth? In today's market, I would put a value on these of about £2,000.

-For both of them? Really?

-For both of them, yeah, they are so charming.

-Right.

-They are so charming.

This is a piece of trench art.

It's made from a fired shell

of which millions were fired during the First World War.

It's slightly unusual in as much as it's dedicated to somebody - to a Private Frost.

What's Private Frost's relationship to you?

Well, I recently found out that this was in the family.

Just like, I'm talking to my granddad about the war and his childhood.

He explained to me he had an uncle who fought in the First World War

who was Private Frost.

It's just amazing to think that somebody in my family

had to go through that, and I thought that was really special to have.

Well, I think you're absolutely right.

This, I'm of the opinion,

-was made by a friend.

-Oh, I see.

There was a huge amount of mate-ship in the First World War -

-you'd always look after your chum in the trenches.

-Yeah.

You weren't always in the front line.

A lot of the time you were in reserve lines and you were bored witless.

There was nothing to do,

so they'd make things with anything they could get hold of.

The principal thing they could get hold of was brass cases,

and it was normally decorative,

but this is dedicated to your great-great-uncle.

Yeah, we're not sure of much about him really, but,

rough dates, we were thinking he would have been 24.

-How old are you?

-I'm 24.

Coincidence.

I think this is a perfect example

representing the First World War.

-It's got no huge monetary value.

-No.

But it's wonderfully indicative of somebody who fought and was a member of what was known as the PBI.

-Oh, right, what's that?

-The Poor Bloody Infantry!

Because he was the poor sap who, at the peep of a whistle, he had to climb up a ladder,

go over the top of a trench, slog across no man's land

into the face of fixed machine-gun fire.

The courage involved in that is phenomenal.

It's unimaginable really, isn't it?

But in the case of your great-great-uncle, he was one of the ones who didn't come back.

No, just so sad, what they had to go through and...

And all the more poignant because you're the same age he was.

-I just can't imagine.

-It makes you think about just what they sacrificed for us.

And here we've got the medals he won for doing this,

you've got the one with the rainbow ribbon, is the Victory Medal,

and the rainbow ribbon, all the Allied Forces, 13 of them, have the same medal

and they used the rainbow to signify that group of people who fought together.

-Oh, I see, yes.

-The other one is the First World War medal

and they'll both have his name, number and his regiment engraved round the edge,

and the big bronze plaque is the so-called death plaque,

and that would be presented to his next of kin after he died,

with a small piece of typewritten paper

with the regnal signature of the King, thanking him for their service.

And this I always find very upsetting about First World War medals -

because of the numbers made, what we discussed,

-they're worth about £20 each.

-Wow!

Coupled up with the death plaque, might be £80,

and this fantastic little piece of trench art is probably worth no more than £20.

But it's what it represents, what it means to you.

Yes, I mean, we don't care about that, it's just

amazing to think that that was a member of my family who fought for,

for what we have today, I suppose.

Absolutely right.

What I love about Victorian architecture, this house being typical,

is this wonderful sort of exuberance, eccentricity, ornamentation.

It's actually complete madness, in stylistic terms, when you look at it,

and I think is was such a great period, they just broke all the rules,

and when you come to a desk like this, in a sense it carries it on.

When you think, well, what's the historical precedent for this?

There isn't one. it's a bit of Gothic, bit of this, bit of that,

it's a complete invention of its time and I think that's wonderful from that point of view.

-Do you agree?

-Yes, absolutely, I've always liked Arts and Crafts, I like Gothic,

-I like all the features on it, that's why I bought it.

-You bought it?

-Yeah.

-Long time ago?

-In, er, '93.

-Right.

-Yeah.

-And do you sit at it and work?

-Er, sometimes, sometimes.

-So, it hasn't quite fulfilled its function?

Not completely, it sits in a room where I've got all my books

but I've got a modern office elsewhere, which I...

Well, we've used the word "Gothic".

I mean, obviously in Gothic you think Pugin and pointed things and Burgess.

This has moved on, this is one of these curious phrases called "Reformed Gothic",

which is much more stripped down, much more ornamental in a decorative sense,

breaking the rules of classical Gothic, it's not archaeological.

You've got this lovely marquetry work with these sort of illusionistic things.

-Yeah.

-That look as though they're actually carved.

It's a familiar type from the 1860 to 1880 period, it's what we like.

Gothic had moved on, it's become something much more modern by that time.

What I find curious about this desk is this tile panel underneath.

-Yeah.

-Do you?

Er, yes, I've never seen one on another desk, I mean usually it's completely open.

Exactly, I've seen hundreds of desks and I've never seen that.

What's the function? It doesn't make sense, therefore what's it for?

-Yeah.

-Have you ever thought about it?

-Not really. I just thought of it as a decorative feature.

-Yeah, right.

If you come at it from a different direction, which I'm going to,

I don't think this is a desk.

-Oh, right.

-And I'll tell you why, this is my thinking.

If you look at the back here,

there are four places where holes have been filled.

-Yes.

-So something... Why should there be holes there?

Ah, interesting.

It means because there was something at the back.

And if it was fairly narrow along the back, it wasn't the upper part of a desk with smaller drawers,

it was probably something like a mirror.

I think this was part of a bedroom set and this was probably the wash stand.

-Where do you put the slop bucket from your ablutions?

-Underneath.

-Underneath, yeah, and suddenly it begins to make sense.

-OK.

And at some point in its history and I don't know...

-Not recently, maybe 50, maybe 100 years ago.

-Yeah.

This ceased to be part of a dressing table set and became a desk.

The leather was inset, which obviously wasn't there,

-it had a different sort of top, as it would have done.

-Yeah.

-Maybe a solid wood top, who knows.

-Interesting.

-And so they cut the...

Made the top, inserted the leather and logically they would have taken that away,

because it has no function whatsoever as a desk.

Probably a lot of work to take that away, though.

But it would have wrecked it cos it's all part of the structure.

-Yeah, yeah.

-And it looks fine. The quality's fantastic and the quality of the drawers, the detailing,

everything about it is high quality.

-What did you pay?

-I paid £2,400.

-Well, I think that's absolutely bang on, you know, it's probably...

-I was going to say two to three, possibly maximum four thousand, so you did all right.

-Yeah.

-Whether the person selling it to you knew the history actually doesn't matter.

-No.

We have here, in a sense, the star of the show, one of the Enigma machines.

Simon Greenish, you're the Director at Bletchley Park, incredible to see the real thing.

How did it work?

It's a wonderfully complex machine, despite the small size.

-Because it just looks like a kind of fancy typewriter really.

-It looks like a typewriter,

and in fact, in many ways, it works like a typewriter.

When you press these keys you get an encoded letter

which you then send through the Morse code system, it's received at the other end

and has to be put through an identical machine, put to the same settings, and out comes the message.

And so... All this is what enabled the encoding to take place?

That's right, within this machine there are 158 million, million, million different options,

so you can see how complex this machine was,

and why I believe the Germans never believed you could break it...

the numbers are simply too big.

Of course, here is where the code was broken.

Have you got, still, any of the decryptions, encryptions of the time?

Yes, yes, we have, we have a number of them and, of course, at the end of the war,

most of the information was disposed of, and destroyed, but just to give an illustration,

this book contains the decrypted messages that were received at Bletchley.

They were all stuck into books like this and we have hundreds and hundreds of them

-so if you look through the various messages...

-So this is what it really meant?

This is what it really meant and this of course is written in German.

At the height of the war, Bletchley was decoding in excess of 6,000 of these messages every single day.

-Every day?

-Every single day, it was an extraordinary process.

And much of the information that was decoded here was absolutely crucial to the war, wasn't it?

Absolutely vital, yes, including the one which is... There is the translation of it...

The message sent by the double agent Garbo

to Madrid and it ended up in front of Hitler, and it was the message that persuaded Hitler

that there was a further attack to come at D-Day, and he kept his forces in Calais

as opposed to actually sending them down to Normandy to repulse the D-Day attack.

This was a double agent, a German in Britain who was turned by British Security Services.

-Yes.

-"After personal consultation with my agents Johnny, Dick and Dorick..."

-His fictitious team.

-"...whose reports I sent today,

"I am of the opinion, in view of the strong troop concentrations in south-east and eastern England

"which are not taking part in the present operations..."

The present operations being the massive D-Day landings...

"...that these operations are a diversionary manoeuvre designed to draw off enemy reserves

"in order then to make a decisive attack in another place." And so Hitler saw this?

Hitler saw that message and presumably acted on it,

because he kept the troops in the Calais area whilst the D-Day landings were happening.

Which was absolutely decisive.

-Absolutely.

-The D-Day landings took us to Paris.

-Yes, that's right.

-Won the land war.

The D-Day landings started the end of the war.

How amazing, and that was all because of this machine.

-All because of this.

-Or machines like this one.

-Yes, yes.

-Incredible.

-Simon, thank you.

-Thank you.

So who are these charming people, do you know?

No, we don't really but we think the scene is based in Cornwall, Mevagissey we think.

The artist is a chap called Max McKinley...

there's sort of something slightly weird about them -

they've each got a bottle of Optrex in them.

You wouldn't normally expect to find a bottle of Optrex in a picture.

-I assume that they were advertising pictures for a campaign.

-Yes, they were.

The tradition of these pictures is very much Norman Rockwell, an American artist,

who painted these very cosy, cheesy sort of subjects in a pre-war era

and here we have the English version of it, and they're very charming as a result.

Valuing these sorts of pictures is really quite difficult because commercial art, as it is,

doesn't come up for auction very often and actually I think is rather under-valued,

but these are so delightful and they make you smile, and I think that's very valuable.

So I suppose they would be worth somewhere around £500 apiece, something like that.

-That's great, thank you so much.

-Not at all, it's been a pleasure.

Now, for somebody who can profess to be a serious collector of moustache cups

there's obviously something missing in your life.

Well, it's missing from your top lip, isn't it?

Yes, from about 1955-2000 I had a handlebar moustache.

-Let's have a look.

-This is a picture of me.

And I need to know whether you prefer your husband with, or without?

-Definitely without.

-Definitely without.

Yeah, I put up with it for over 30 years.

-You put up with it for over 30 years.

-Yes, it was a messy horrible thing.

A marriage made in heaven.

She never believed that a kiss without a moustache is like beef without mustard.

Oh, my goodness me.

Only a man could say that, I can tell you that for a fact.

Er, so when did you start collecting these?

Er, I was first given one...

-my 21st birthday.

-And how many have you got in total?

This is just a selection, I believe.

I've got around 550.

I'm not sure whether we're looking at a collection or an obsession, do you know that?

This is a... This is the sort of thing that, you know, was a must

for every sort of Victorian gentleman and into the Edwardian age, you know.

I'm just intrigued to see the variety of what you've got here,

cos some of these were made on the Continent, some are made in Staffordshire.

This one, you can see... I mean, that's got to be a good 'un, hasn't it,

when you turn it upside down... Royal Crown Derby.

We've got so many here, what do you think's your rarest cup?

-I believe the Belleek moustache cup.

-Oh, right at the bottom there.

I believe that's the only one outside of the Belleek Museum,

although there may well be one in an American collection.

Unfortunately, because we're clean shaven men, we can't really demonstrate this,

What I need is...

I need someone...

See, all these chaps are clean shaven. Have we got... Oh, there's one here, all right.

Would like to just... Can we... Can we drag... Do you mind?

I mean, I am so pleased that I've shaved mine off, because I would feel totally inadequate

next to a man like you there, so I can only assume you were a Flying Officer or whatever,

cos that looks very RAF to me.

-I was in the RAF, yes.

-You were in the RAF, right, excellent.

There's a cappuccino there, would you mind taking a sip out of our BBC Antiques Roadshow mug...

give it a go and go for it. OK, right, let's have a see,

A-ha, yes.

Can you pass me a... Thank you very much Dave, thank you.

Would you like to just remove the debris up there? I always found it quite useful having a moustache,

Once you had breakfast you could continue eating all the way to work couldn't you?

-Yeah.

-So let's try, the Victorian moustache cup and let's see what the result is.

OK.

Perfect, I rest my case. Yes.

Excellent.

Thank you very much for that. Thank you very much indeed.

I mean it's a matter really of, of deciding, you know, what on earth 500 moustache cups are worth.

You see I can't find them and now I know why I can't find them, because you've bought them.

You seem to have bought every one that's turned up, so when it comes to values,

it's all... I mean some are worth obviously more than others, aren't they?

For example if I was to go out and look for a Royal Crown Derby one, I don't think I could get one of those

for less than £200 you know, and if I could just pick out one more,

it's going to be the Belleek one because that is obviously something of a rarity, and, er...

I've never seen one before...

So if somebody was to tell me that was worth £300 to £400, I would not be surprised, OK.

So your entire collection, if you wanted to go out and replace it today,

you're going to be spending in excess of £20,000.

-How does that make you feel?

-I'd be pleased if he got rid of them.

So, was it worth 30-odd years of having to kiss this man with a moustache? That's the big question.

-I'm not going to answer it.

-No, no, no, no, tell me later.

-You've surprised me.

-Thank you very much indeed.

-Thank you.

-Thank you.

This beautiful bisque head doll, what's her story?

Well, my great-grandfather, Charles Crampton, was butler to the Dean of Lichfield

towards the end of the 19th century and he had two daughters, my great aunts,

their names were Gertrude and Edith, and they had a collection of dolls.

This is one of them, and they've come down through the family and I'm now custodian of the collection.

Well, she's certainly a beautiful, beautiful doll and now if we just turn her over,

-just to have a look, and not surprisingly, here on the back, it's a Jumeau doll.

-Yes, yes.

Jumeau was the Rolls Royce of doll makers,

French factory, many of the clothes designed by Madame Jumeau in the period,

and this, with her nice closed mouth

-and fabulous, fabulous...

-Aren't they wonderful?

..paperweight eyes, absolutely beautiful, they're such, they're such deep blue, absolutely wonderful.

-And the lashes, as well.

-I know, don't you wish we had these lashes? Look at them.

They're painted lashes and pierced ears, this is absolutely typical of a doll from sort of 1885-1890

so just at that period, and you were saying your great-grandfather was a butler.

-Yes, he was.

-I would say that a doll of this quality, and obviously price, because when this doll was bought,

she was very, very expensive, so I wonder if perhaps the employers, when your great-grandfather

-had a baby daughter, if the employers gave as a present.

-Yes, quite possibly, quite possibly, yes.

Because really it is a spectacular doll, beautifully jointed wrists.

-Yes.

-Everything you'd expect. These wonderful gloves, marvellous, and these shoes,

do you know, the amazing thing is, a pair of little shoes like this,

can sell for about £250.

Good gracious, just the shoes?

Just the shoes, and the doll, have you any idea what she's worth?

Well, it has been suggested to me that she is quite a valuable doll

but I don't know, specifically, how much she would be worth.

Well, sadly, period dolls have gone down a little bit in value, of late,

-but Jumeau have really kept their prices quite well.

-Yes, OK.

So this lovely little doll that's been so well looked after, is worth between £2,000 and £2,500.

Good gracious me, that's a lot more than I expected,

-I thought she was quite valuable, but I didn't realise as much as that.

-She's a beautiful example.

Not that I shall be selling her. She'll stay in the family and I have a daughter

so she'll pass on to my daughter and hopefully down the generations.

-Very good, she's in a good family.

-Thank you.

In a year at the Antiques Roadshow, I see hundreds, if not thousands of scientific instruments.

I have to admit, not one of these before,

so it really excites me and hopefully we can find out what it is, and how it works.

This is actually a model of the very first dynamo, effectively,

where the coils were revolved in front of a magnet rather than the magnet revolved in front of a coil,

so, in that sense, it's a forerunner of maybe all today's dynamos and magnetos.

Er, obviously we have here...

big horseshoe magnets

and then a handle here that rotates...

-Yes.

-..the coil.

-Yes.

And that then converts

-the mechanical energy here...

-Yeah.

..into electrical energy that comes out there.

Yes, they see electrical energy from there.

-But it's early, isn't it?

-It's very early.

My belief is that this is made in about 1840 by John Newman, who I understand

was the maker for Michael Faraday, or the Royal Institution, at least, when Michael Faraday was there.

I don't know that there'd be that many earlier ones perhaps in existence,

I know there are some, and some were produced before it,

but you're getting to the start of the days of electricity, really.

Obviously we've got the name of the maker here, and again the name actually on the magnets.

-Yes.

-So how did you come by it?

I was working in a university and a physics department was closing down,

they threw away a whole load of stuff.

This was amongst it and I grabbed it, with some other stuff,

and it lay in my living room for a long time, maybe ten years before we down-sized our house

and because it's not a beautiful object, it's a fascinating object, I was thinking of getting rid of it

and when I did the research to see what it might be worth, I couldn't find much about it

and then I found one and it was very early, which is kind of why I think it's...

It's a great object but it's still not much to look at.

Well, I disagree with you.

Er, in its own way, it has a certain beauty, I love the detail of it,

just here we have a little sort of reservoir for the mercury

and you could, you know, fill it up with mercury then push it back in,

and then should you drop a bit, the mercury would run into the channel here.

-Yeah.

-That sort of design feature.

I mean amazing, I mean, it was thrown away by a university.

And it could have easily been thrown away years ago by myself.

I remember offering to sell it to a friend, I said, "Take it, it's yours for 50 quid".

I admire you for saving it, and not accepting the £50,

because I think it is hugely important in the history of electrical science.

I mean, they must be extraordinarily rare.

At auction I wouldn't be surprised if this made a substantial figure,

I mean, not £50, not £500,

but more like £6,000 to £8,000 or even £8,000 to £10,000.

I mean, it is a museum piece.

Thank you. Not bad, eh?

-Thank you,

-Brilliant.

-Yes.

-I thought you were really going to disappoint me, publicly humiliate me.

-No.

-Fantastic piece.

-Brilliant, thank you.

"Corporation of London, May 1937."

So what are you doing, as an Australian, with a London Corporation spoon?

Well, it was my late husband's spoon, he was in London in 1937

and all the children were given one of these spoons to commemorate the coronation.

-Now this one is actually rather special.

-Really?

-And do you know why?

-No.

It's special because what we've got there is George VI.

Now I see hundreds of spoons, we get them brought in all the time, Edward VIII.

-Right.

-They are very common

because there was plenty of time to prepare for the coronation of Edward VIII, which of course never happened.

-Yes. Uh-huh.

-And by the time of the abdication, there was very little time

to prepare souvenirs and so on, for the coronation of George VI.

-Oh, right.

-So everyone thinks Edward VIII is rare. He's not, he's common.

-Oh.

-George VI is the rare one.

-Rare one. Good heavens!

-So it makes it a very interesting spoon.

Do you know I've been waiting ages for somebody to bring one in

and you've brought it all the way from Australia.

I don't know why I put it in my case. Something told me to bring it, I don't know why.

Well, there we are, the vibes I was sending out. You picked up on them.

-That's what it was, yeah.

-So I would say, value wise, for this, you'd be looking at least £100.

-Good heavens!

-So are you pleased you brought it all the way?

-I'm very pleased I brought it.

I was offered 20 for that in Australia a few years ago.

I'll give you 30.

If I'm right in thinking, this dark picture is a window into the forgotten life of...

Well it's arguably the most important collector, certainly in Germany,

but possibly in the whole of Europe in the first part of the 20th century.

Yeah that's correct, it's my great-grandfather James Simon.

-Unbelievable.

-He started his collecting very early,

apparently he had his first Rembrandt when he was 18,

but he donated everything to create the museums that are in Berlin today,

especially on the Egyptian side and also in the bronzes and art.

So all these artistic and collecting genes are running through your body, are they?

I wish.

So you've ended up with a picture of him,

and the picture itself is a little museum.

I mean every one of his important objects, it looks,

are standing or lying, or on the wall around him, and in the picture there, I think we can see a Filippino Lippi,

-one of the great treasures of the Renaissance, which I believe was destroyed by bombing.

-Yes.

And how come that you ended up with this picture and can I be so rude as to ask...

how come you didn't end up with the rest of the collection?

I wish I could, unfortunately he gave it all away, and that was his dear wish, was to, er...

But all except this picture.

Well, this picture is of him, so...

it's a family thing, a memorial to what he has achieved.

-Now James Simon was Jewish.

-He was.

What I find really surprising is that, as a prominent Jewish family in Berlin in the 1930's...

that they survived at all.

Hitler made a decree that our family be left alone,

due to the quality of the collection that was donated.

How extraordinary. And was much taken from the family?

Everything else. I mean they were left destitute, but alive.

Part of the collection was in East Berlin,

the rest in the West and a major museum is now being built to house it.

That is correct, there's an annexe being built on Museum Island in Berlin

which will house the entrance into all the museums,

because his collection will be spread among a lot of them,

and it will be known as the James Simon annexe.

David Chipperfield, the architect, has designed it and hopefully it will be built by 2012.

I have to say it's thrilling that you've ended up with this

and perhaps you know, one day it might end up in the museum.

I can't tell you who painted it but what I can tell you is, it's preparation for a larger picture.

This feels like a posed sketch, a sort of modello.

I suspect it's by someone quite prominent because this is a man who was in touch with great art.

One day we'll find out, but what I can tell you is, given the importance of the man,

given the museum, and given the fact that it incorporates all these other objects in that compelling way,

I would put a valuation of £2,000 to £3,000.

Thank you very much.

If you had the Filippino Lippi in the middle, it would be worth about 20 million pounds.

The whole collection has been recently valued at over 20 billion.

Well, this is a nice little reminder of what you could have had.

Yes, sad but true but I'm donating this picture to the annexe in Berlin

-and I'm just going through the motions of that now.

-Good for you.

Thank you very much indeed.

When I'm not doing a Roadshow, you can picture me

scrubbing the floors just like this lovely little toy here. Whose was it?

It was my mother's and she used to keep it hidden away from us mostly

and I think she had some sentimental attachment to it,

but we used to ask her quite often, "can we see Busy Lizzie work?" and so she...

We'd get it out and she'd wind it up and away it would go.

And Busy Lizzie she is indeed, there's the name underneath there,

patented both in Britain and made in Germany

and dating from around the mid 1920s.

The key, that particular key,

is very much the maker's mark of a company called Gunterman, a German company based in Nuremberg.

-Right.

-But the jury is out on a specific manufacturer.

Right.

When I first saw the box, I got terribly excited because I thought it was the original box,

but actually it says on here "pair of book ends".

-Ah, right.

-So having, having just about to congratulate you on keeping the original box with it, sadly not.

But these toys are very desirable, it's a great action,

it's beautiful condition, it's by, we hope, that very good German maker.

-Right.

-And value would be between about £400 and £600.

-Wow.

But she also has...how to say it... another use which is priceless

which is, you know, wind her up, put her down on the parquet flooring, go out for the day

and by the time you come back, everything will be sparkling.

Sweet, isn't she?

Just what I'll be doing when I go home.

That's it, she's had enough.

This looks like the Chrysler building on the back boiler, doesn't it?

It's absolute distillation of Art Deco madness. Tell me about it for you.

Well, I actually don't know anything very much about it.

It was my grandmother's and she gave it to me, so I don't know anything about it

which is why I'm here, asking you basically.

I think it's a pretty lavish gesture for Granny to give you that, I must say

and it doesn't happen to everybody.

This is a diamond double clip from the late 1920s or '30s.

It evokes a level of entertaining that's completely gone now, people simply don't go to dances

with their fellows in black tie, wearing the best dress they possibly could,

kind of bedizened with diamonds, probably made from you know, a very, very important house such as...

Garrard, I think in this case would be a useful candidate.

I think it's English and it's a swirling, switch-back piece of Art Deco jewellery.

What do you feel like when you wear it?

Er, slightly nervous.

No, I actually really like it because it's really sparkly which is really...

And I like the style because I quite like Art Deco because

it's a bit plainer and I quite like that sort of simplicity, the bit in the middle.

I suppose it is simple, it's a miracle of setting, of mounting and of architecture if you like.

White metal in honour of pure white watery diamonds, set in pave set here,

brilliant diamonds with baguette diamonds coming out on these strange sort of stylised flower motifs.

And those are two sort of highly sophisticated examples of 20th-century diamond cutting.

But more miraculously is when we turn it over, we can see on the back that

it's what we call a diamond double clip, it takes apart to make two brooches,

which a girl would wear on either side of the top of her dress, or on her lapels or something,

so versatility, charm, structure, design...

It's what everybody wants.

This is a thing very much of the moment. Did you know that?

-Er, no.

-It's very, very high fashion, it was anything but when I first encountered jewellery,

which is far too long ago, it was hopelessly out of fashion, people broke them up

and scorned them, and now it's exactly what everybody wants.

And it is a conspicuously valuable object.

I think it would be jolly hard to buy that under any circumstances less than, well,

£14,000 today.

Really?

Er, that's quite a lot more than I had anticipated actually.

Ah, so I shall have to wear it with even more nervousness in the future then.

Well, wear it with pride, for Granny.

-Oh, I certainly do.

-Fabulous, yes, wonderful, thank you.

-Thank you.

We've had a fascinating day here at Bletchley Park, home of World War Two code breaking,

and do you know, what went on here was so secretive

that it wasn't generally known about until the 1970s when it was finally declassified, and it's only now

that the men and women who worked here finally have been recognised with a medal.

This is what it will look like, "1939-1945, we also served"

and they certainly did, the work they did here was crucial to winning the Second World War.

From Bletchley Park and the Antiques Roadshow, bye-bye.

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